Copyright has not been assigned to The Graduate Theological Union. All requests for
permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the
Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Graduate Theological
Union as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Office Of The President And Dean. GTU Guild, GTU 91-8-1, The
Graduate Theological Union Archives, Berkeley, CA.

Access Points

Graduate Theological Union --History --Sources

Women --Societies and clubs --California --Berkeley

Women and religion --History --Sources

Agency History

The GTU Guild was formed as a women's auxiliary in 1968 at the request of John
Dillenberger, then President of GTU, "to support and interpret the GTU to groups in the
community". The guild ceased in the early 1980s.

An early letter of invitation to membership states: "The Guild needs people
who would enjoy helping with the expansion of the membership, working with the
Bibliographical Center, helping with special events, working on a speakers' bureau,
guiding tours of visiting dignitaries around the seminaries, serving as a hostess, or
assisting with secretarial work."

Membership included wives of the heads of the
participating institutions, the women members of the Board of Trustees, and lay persons
from each of the denominations represented by the seminaries. In 1970, the Guild
published a handbook on the GTU:
The Graduate Theological Union: Its Participants
and Their Ecclesiastical Heritage.
They also were active in hosting receptions,
providing public tours of the seminaries, offered twice yearly programs to the public,
provided speakers to community and church groups, and raised donations and gave support
for acquisitions to first the Bibliographical Center, then the Common Library. In
1975-76, a Guild Scholarship was founded to provide emergency funds to students with
pressing needs. Though the Guild ceased to function as a group in the early 1980's, the
Scholarship continues to be given irregularly.